


Sore Must Be The Storm

by AuguriesofInnocence



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, I mean everything's fine and nothing hurts, Less Starker than intended and more introspection, M/M, No character death so that's something, Not Beta Read, Peter Parker can see it, Peter Parker needs help, Poor Peter and his existential anxiety, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark is that help, Where this falls in the timeline is up to you, everything hurts and nothing's fine, haha everything's fine, hopeful?, it's blue and shines right on his chest like a beacon, underage but nothing happens, what's wrong with everyone, why can't everyone else see it?, yet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-08 00:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuguriesofInnocence/pseuds/AuguriesofInnocence
Summary: Peter doesn't need help, he's completely fine, he's amazing in fact!  The Amazing Spider-Man.  He can take care of Aunt May and himself and the entire city of New York, just you watch!   It's just, he's so tired and also Aunt May keeps looking at him like he's breaking her heart but you know, it's all good.  It's not like everyone's just watching, waiting for Spider-Man to slip up right? Haha.Then Tony Stark starts giving Peter sandwiches and affirmation and he walks right off his pedestal and starts being all beautiful, and painfully human.  Peter's pretty sure he's in trouble.





	Sore Must Be The Storm

It’s not like Peter doesn’t know that he’s a literal child ok, he’s reminded constantly. Every little thing he can’t fix, can’t control, can’t help. He’s reminded by the wry smile and the tightness around Aunt May’s eyes when she sees another hole in his jeans, when he loses another shoe, another backpack, and then by the way her hand hovers over the fresh meat at the market before she turns instead toward the rows and rows of cans and it’s chili for dinner than night.

He’s reminded when he mentions that the corner store is looking for a cashier and he was thinking about stopping in and applying, just weekends you know, and her knuckles go white on the counter top and she says, “Oh Peter, don’t be silly, you just focus on school now”. 

And her breath hitches for a second and he just, somehow he’s made things worse again. When all he wants to do is help, that’s all he ever wants.

He knows she stays up late now, worrying, and that’s on him too. And he knows that if she knew he thought about any of this she would be horrified but Aunt May’s his responsibility, and he wouldn’t want it to be any other way. Because he loves her, she’s all he has left now. Because she loves him fiercely. Because Uncle Ben would have wanted it that way. 

With great power comes great responsibility and Peter knows that Spider-Man is powerful, just last week he slipped, he didn't hold back. One of his arms were broken and he hadn't been to sleep yet and he was worried about his chemistry test in the morning so…he hit that shoddy B-Villain so hard that he felt something crack; and if that had been someone without an enhanced exoskeleton and accelerated healing well, he doesn't even want to think about it, but he will because he has to, he has to be more careful, just, so careful. 

Still, he knows he’s a child, because when he’s washing the dishes and she sees a half-healed slice on his arm from a minor, a very minor, ok, it was no big deal, Aunt May, scuffle with the Goblin, he lets her fuss over it. And then he pretends not to notice the shine in her eyes because with great power comes great responsibility. And this whole city is Spider-Man’s. He can protect them both. He can.

She’s said that she understands, that she’s proud of him. After yelling at him for being reckless, and hugging him tight, and crying, and a four-hour long phone call with Tony, Mr. Stark. They both pretend that nothing has really changed because in the end he had looked her in the eye and said that he was Spider-Man and she believed him. They'd both been afraid, in that heart-beat of a moment, of what would happen if she denied it.

Losing his secret wasn’t a relief or a weight off his shoulders, it’s just one more thing he’s taken from her, just like Uncle Ben.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 

Peter Parker knows that he’s a child, but also, he hasn’t been a child since he watched blood pool under Uncle Ben as he lay on the cold cement. Or maybe since the day he froze when Skip Westcott called him Einstein in a gravelly voice and clamped his hand on Peter's arm. Now every time someone new calls him Einstein he tastes bile in the back of his throat, which is always tight, and he can’t speak, just smile weakly and slip away so Ned or MJ can explain that “that really bothers Peter, for some reason”. Nobody's ever done it twice.

Maybe something’s really wrong with Peter now. Spider-Man’s the friendly neighborhood hero, not Peter, and too many people are in on the secret. Is it even a secret anymore? There’s some quote about the less people that know and secrets, Peter thinks. The more people that find out, the more enemies Spider-Man makes, the more terrified he grows of seeing his face splashed on the front of the Bugle. Of walking into school and seeing all the other students staring at him, whispering, expecting even more and…he just can't.

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, a scream caught in his throat. When he goes out the next day it feels like everyone is staring at him, whispering about him, and his heart thrums in his chest rabbit-like until Ned smiles and says, “Hey Peter, you ok? Not enough sleep again?”

Or MJ says, “whoa Parker, I refuse to believe you’ve seen a ghost, so what’s up with you? Never mind, I just remembered, I don’t really care” peering over her book at him with concerned eyes until she sees his shoulders start to relax. Because if they’re normal then everything’s still fine, everything must be fine.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Just when his shoulders feel like they’re going to buckle under the weight, Tony Stark enters stage left. And he is a revelation. Tony Stark™ is loud, snarky, and bright as the sun. When Peter Parker walks next to Tony Stark™ he knows every eye in the room will be laser focused on Tony, and the sheer relief that moment of invisibility gives Peter is beyond price.

Then, behind closed doors, Tony, Mr. Stark, strips off his sunglasses and suit jacket and smiles at Peter in a way that makes Peter wish they were the only two people left in all the world (a thought that he immediately feels guilty about) because he wants Tony, Mr. Stark, to look at him forever. He wants Tony to see him.

Tony, with his sleeves rolled up and grease on his cheek and his elbow; who says, “no Dummy not you, no not you kid, damnit Dummy’s the robot, kid, you hand me that wrench, yes that one, Friday order us some Chinese, you like szechuan chicken Parker?”

So yeah, Peter’s a kid still, technically, he knows. But he wishes he wasn’t, for so many reasons, but not least of which is that Tony Stark ruffles his hair. 

Tony Stark saw the rip in his jeans and the next weekend a disgruntled looking Happy drug Peter to the mall, and when he protested shoved a card at Peter that said, “Don’t even, kid. I of all people know how rough the Superhero business is on the wardrobe. Consider this a signing bonus” in Tony's cramped handwriting. And then he starts to pay Peter a wage for “being a Stark intern, obviously” to “help with the authenticity, why are you even asking me these questions kid, this is way below my pay-grade”.

And all Peter feels about this is a building warmth where an empty stomach used to be, because Tony formulated high calorie high protein supplements after looking at Peter’s test results saying “Jesus kid, your metabolism is insane, you must be starving, why did you not mention this?!”

Then, too, there’s Iron Man, who’s saved Peter when he was drowning. Who repaired what Peter broke. Who trusted Spider-Man to fight by his side, who gave Spider-Man a suit to make him stronger. So Peter just, well, he can’t quite take his eyes off him, he doesn't want to ever take his eyes off of him.

And of course it started off as idolization, as infatuation. Sometimes being intelligent and self-aware is not particularly comfortable, so it’s not like Peter was fooling himself into thinking it was anything else, or that it could ever be anything real. It was just nice. Neither Tony Stark nor Iron Man would ever really need anything from Peter Parker or Spider-Man and so for a few hours he could just relax, safe in the knowledge that he was not the first or the last line of defense in Stark Tower.

Tony, Mr. Stark, had a lot of people. He had people who worked for him, and he had friends, and he had Pepper. But, and the problem is, is that they all kept hurting him. Then they started leaving, in some fashion or another. They weren’t even really doing anything wrong, except sometimes instead of seeing Tony they were seeing Tony Stark™ or The Invincible Iron Man™. They were all braced for Tony Stark™'s problems, PR Team and charcoal pills in hand, and nobody seemed to know what to do with Tony, who dreamed of falling, of failing, of being the last one left alive in the emptiness of space.

Peter sees now that, even though Tony has money and a team and various different suits of armor, he's suffering through Peter’s greatest nightmare right in front of him, and he's smiling, and handing peter a pb&j, telling him he’s done a good job, and ruffling his hair.

So yeah, Peter wishes sometimes that he wasn’t a kid, because, for Tony? He would smile, run his fingers through Tony's hair. He would make pb&j. He would stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading. Hope you enjoyed it! I'm not currently planning on continuing this but considering I didn't really intend to write it in the first place who knows. :)


End file.
